Following the closure of the Parma Fencing Master's School under Cesare Enrichetti, the graduates of this school were obliged to attend a 9-month course at the Milan school to learn Radaelli's method. Later reflections on this period from those who witnessed it remark that this formal meeting of the two schools was the beginning of a period of great collaboration and improvement for both parties.
The majority of Enrichettians could clearly see the results that experimentation among the Radaellians had produced with regard to sabre fencing, while the Radaellians were able to benefit from the established tradition inherited by Enrichetti and his students. It should also be noted that this exchange of knowledge was not purely confined to each school's respective specialisation, and while the Radaellians were in general not highly regarded for their sword fencing,1 both Arista and Masiello (products of the Radaelli and Enrichetti schools, respectively) noted that Enrichettians recognised the value in relying less strictly on wrist movement in sword fencing, as was typical in traditional and Southern Italian schools.2
Neapolitan commentators and their supporters, on the other hand, made sure to differentiate between the Radaellians and the Enrichettians, as they generally respected the latter camp as an offshoot of the Neapolitan school while the former were an insult to their great fencing traditions. While northerners championed the military fencers on the whole as a shining example of the Italian military's educational achievements, Neapolitan partisans considered Radaelli's sword method 'seriously harmful' to the young men of the military.3 Because of this, they had to frame the competitive successes of the Radaellians, particularly in sword fencing, to factors unrelated to the merits of the Radaelli school. Take for example the very pro-Neapolitan official report of the 1881 Milan tournament:
We then saw Arista, who, despite the statement he made of belonging to the Radaelli school, fenced with an Italian foil, and except for a few things he showed us how, with good will and by fencing with fencers of a pure school, as well as by seeing them fence among themselves, he who has natural dispositions and love for the art can make serious progress. [...] In Giordano Rossi, strong in the Radaelli system, beautiful and composed in guard, we found a tight game, due to his frequent fencing with members of the Italian school. Pecoraro owes the speed of his parries and ripostes to his special talents more than to the Radaelli school.4
While the growing opposition towards the Milan Fencing Master's School—exemplified in this report, the report on the Naples Gymnastics Congress5 later that same year, and various publications of the late 1870s—was an issue for the Radaellians, in February 1882 they suffered their greatest blow when the very founder of their school, Giuseppe Radaelli, died tragically after a protracted illness. Although Radaelli had not been able to teach for some time beforehand, his death provided a golden opportunity for change. Proposals of this nature can be found in the aforementioned reports, made while Radaelli was still alive, and they naturally favoured putting a champion of the Neapolitan or 'Italian' school in power:
And given Radaelli's illness, the post of directing master of the Master's School in Milan is open, and since the directing master must start clearing the way, one must start by appointing to that post a master who is not only a good fencer, but also a good master, and shown to have made good students. This master must also not be driven by partisan spirit and must have the character of a perfect gentleman. Having appointed such a master to direct the Master's School, his first task should be to make use of all the good members that are in it, putting them on the good path, unifying the system with a single sword form (the Italian).6
Those who supported the current generation of Enrichettians and Radaellians, however, likely saw this more as chance to formalise the union of these two groups and create a new curriculum more representative of their collective experience and experiments.
And so it was in this tense climate that the Modena tournament took place, in July 1882. Although billed as a 'national' tournament, the competitors appear to have all come from Northern Italy and Tuscany. 67 masters and 40 amateurs competed, which was a reasonable turnout, but nevertheless overshadowed by the famous Milan tournament of the previous year, which saw competitors not just from Southern Italy, but also Austria and France.
Similar to the 1881 Milan tournament, well over a dozen special prizes were donated to the organisers by fencing societies and government ministries, to be awarded not just for those who won the sword and sabre pools, but also for the pairs deemed to have done the best bouts and for the 'best fencer' of the tournament. With the lack of competition from Southern Italians, however, most of the special prizes awarded to fencing masters went to Radaellians, with Salvatore Pecoraro alone receiving five by winning both pools, taking part in the best bouts, and winning the prize for best fencer.
The jury contained two amateurs and seven masters, the latter group consisting specifically of Paolo Cornaglia, Giovanni Ciullini, Giuseppe Perez, Cesare Enrichetti, Alessandro Pavia, Giovanni Domenico Reverso, and Antonio Tinti.7 Perez was the only master out of the jury not teaching in the military at the time, although he had in fact spent around 5 years in the 1860s teaching at the Modena school, where Enrichetti, Pavia, Reverso, and Tinti were teaching in 1882.8
The reason this tournament intersects with the topic at hand is not just that it was held in a very divided period of Italian fencing and only five months after the death of Giuseppe Radaelli, but because of a short report on the tournament that appeared first in the Milanese newspaper Il Secolo on 18 June, then again the following month in a slightly expanded form in Turin's Gazzetta Piemontese on 4 July. The anonymous journalist clearly favours the Radaellians, ignoring the many prizes awarded to non-Radaellian amateurs, but the second half of the article (the part republished from Il Secolo) demonstrates the author's main agenda. To this writer, the army already had all the resources it needed to establish a more solid theoretical foundation for its fencing instruction, through the combined knowledge of the champions of both the Enrichetti and Radaelli schools.
This hopeful vision for a formalised union of the two schools, to be brought about through a collaboration of military fencing masters alone, lies in stark contrast to what would result from the Ministry of War's treatise competition, announced in September that same year, the submissions for which to be judged by a commission made up entirely of amateurs, both military and civilian.
Below is the Gazzetta Piemontese's version of this article, translated in full.
On the day of 18 June the national fencing tournament initiated by the La Fratellanza Society of Modena ended.
The royal and ministerial prizes placed at the disposal of the tournament jury surpassed in number and value those of all other tournaments and fencing congresses, and well-deserved praise for this is owed to the honourable deputies Corvetto and Triani, who left no stone unturned for the success of the tournament.
The two distinguished deputies, urged by Maestro Cav. Cornaglia, promised to make every effort at the Ministry of War to improve the conditions of military fencing masters.
Worthy of special commendation are the Marquis Carandini, president of the La Fratellanza Society, promotor of the tournament, vice-president Avv. Martinelli, responsible for receiving the jury, and the engineer Cialdini, secretary of said jury—who with their untiring activity contributed so much to the good progress of the tournament.
The champions of the tournament were the masters Pecoraro, Corsini, Rossi, Pessina, Scarani, and Varrone, all students of Maestro Radaelli, graduates of the Milan Master’s School.
There were 67 masters and 40 amateurs who took part in the competitions, and they declared themselves to be of various schools, that is: Radaelli, Enrichetti, Italian, mixed, and several: Enrichetti sword, Radaelli sabre.
The competitions always proceeded regularly and the fencers all competed with skill and chivalry.
In this tournament everyone admired the indisputable quality of the Radaelli sabre school, and these facts are worth far more than any contrary judgement given by people who, if not incompetent, are certainly very biased.
Until now a true fencing system has not existed in the army; in order to have one single system the Ministry of War should form a Commission of masters of the two schools, Radaelli-Enrichetti, and adopt a uniform Italian school, which is suited to our military needs.
Then if the Ministry of War wants a sabre fencing treatise which serves as the basis of training in the army, it could entrust the task to any of the current masters in the military institutes who have been teaching in the army for several years.
The basis of this system should be Radaelli’s, because it is too rational to be changed; so true is this that almost all the old sabre fencing masters practise the Radaelli system even though they criticise it, because they recognise its utility.
Proof of the quality of the Radaelli sabre system is seen in the fact that in all the congresses, national and international tournaments, including the last one in Naples and the recent one in Modena, the first prize in sabre was always won by the students of Radaelli.
And as evidence, even in the recent tournament the prizes from His Majesty the King, Prince Amedeo, the Ministers of War, the Navy, the Interior, Public Education, and from Modenese gentlemen, were all won by the students of Radaelli, and the prize from the Foreign Minister was won by Maestro Provenzale, a student of Enrichetti for the sword and Radaelli for the sabre.
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2 Salvatore Arista, Del progresso della scherma in Italia (Bologna: Società Tipografica già Compositori, 1884), 8–9; Ferdinando Masiello, La scherma italiana di spada e di sciabola (Florence: G. Civelli, 1887), 129.↩
3 Domenico Cariolato and Gioacchino Granito, Relazione del torneo internazionale di scherma tenuto in Milano nel giugno 1881 (Naples: Tipi Ferrante, 1881), 37.↩
4 Ibid., 139–40.↩
5 Luigi Cosenz, Il XI congresso ginnastico italiano in Napoli (Naples: Francesco Giannini, 1881).↩
6 Cariolato and Granito, Relazione del torneo, 149.↩
7 "Torneo nazionale di scherma," Corriere della Sera, 15 June 1882.↩
8 A list of civil fencing masters employed by the Italian army can be found in the yearly releases of Annuario militare del Regno d'Italia, published in Rome by Carlo Voghera.↩
